JIRA – Atlassian Blogshttp://blogs.atlassian.com
Software development and collaboration toolsFri, 09 Dec 2016 14:12:58 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1JIRABloghttps://feedburner.google.com5 ways to work better with JIRA mobilehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/Mqz6wKqiamw/
Thu, 01 Dec 2016 15:00:59 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=36275If you're a JIRA Software or JIRA Core user with a site hosted in the Cloud, read about 5 ways to be more productive with JIRA mobile on iPhone and Android.

]]>If you’re a JIRA Software or JIRA Core user with a site hosted in the Cloud, you probably already know about the JIRA Cloud apps we’ve released for iPhone and Android. The last few months have seen rapid development, including the addition of boards and edit issue support. Plus, our chock-full backlog includes many of the things you’ve been asking for.

This article shows you how to make the most of our newest mobile features. And, if you haven’t already, we hope it encourages you to join the growing number of JIRA mobile users.

Fast shortcuts

How can you get things done faster on the go? Using shortcuts, you can now access key functions without even opening the app. On iPhone, use 3D touch (hard press) on the JIRA app icon to access shortcuts to search and create.

And when you’re viewing the board or your tasks, use the same hard press to preview an issue and access quick actions.

On Android, we’re working on a similar function that will allow you to access shortcuts with a long-press on the app logo. This is coming soon for anyone using a smartphone with Android 7.1 or later.

So next time you’re in a meeting and want to add a task, or you remember something important when you’re walking to the train, get it done then and there in the JIRA Cloud app.

Notification control

We know that notifications from JIRA can be a bit overwhelming sometimes. One of the reasons is that you automatically become a watcher on any issue you report or comment on. For some people, once an issue is reported, the issue activity does not need to be tracked, only the outcome. With JIRA mobile, we’ve made it easier to “unwatch” issues giving you more control over notifications. Next time you get a notification or email for an issue you no longer care about, simply tap to open the issue and then stop watching it. You’ll never hear about it again unless you want to or someone mentions you.

Similarly, if there’s an issue you need to know about, or you are waiting on a response (say, from an overseas team member), start watching the issue on web or mobile and you’ll get notified wherever you are at the time it happens. You can even fine-tune what you get notified about in the app’s settings menu and choose which issues you get push notifications for.

Move work forward

Kanban and Scrum boards are among the most popular features that we’ve recently brought to the apps, because they help managers and product owners stay up to date with how their team is progressing – from anywhere. When you’re working on a task, you can easily progress it by opening it and tapping the “transition” button. When you return to the board, you’ll see it gets updated straightaway. We’re also adding the ability to drag and drop cards on the board, but we’re still getting that right.

Emails open straight in the app

Most of us travel with our office in our pocket, even if it’s just email. So being able to open up JIRA links from email notifications in the JIRA app vastly improves the experience of “work away from work.” And if you have the new Confluence Cloud app (get it now for Android or iPhone at atlassian.app.link/confluence), you can quickly open JIRA links in the app, and vice versa. For example, you can open a linked Confluence feature spec in the Confluence app, from the JIRA app.

Find it your way, every time

Search is a frequently-used function and we’ve made it easily accessible from every part of the app. For iPhone users, you can even use the in-built “Spotlight” search to find your issues. But did you know that you can also use JIRA’s query language (JQL) to find the issues you want? If you’re a JQL master, you’ll have no problems typing in what you need (find out more about JQL). For others, a simple copy and paste of your most-used query can help you find anything you’re looking for. Stay tuned because we’re also working on bringing your favorite and saved filters from the web into the app.

We know that all teams use JIRA a little differently, which is why we need your feedback to keep improving. Email us your requests and feedback at jira-mobile@atlassian.com or just shake your phone while JIRA is open, and message us that way.

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/12/5-ways-to-work-better-with-jira-mobile/4 add-ons to help you test smarter and more efficientlyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/rfwgZkLD27U/
Wed, 30 Nov 2016 14:00:28 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=36233Testing the software and applications that we make is one of the most important things we can do as technology makers. In our hyper-connected and "always on" world, if you don't find the bugs in your product, your customer will – and they'll probably tweet about it. Here's how you can improve your testing methods with some help from some add-ons available in the Atlassian Marketplace.

Testing our software and applications is one of the most important things we can do as technology makers. In our hyper-connected and “always on” world, if you don’t find the bugs in your product, your customer will – and they’ll probably tweet about it. With the wealth of choices out there today, companies don’t have the wiggle room to make too many mistakes in the product before customers move on to the next solution. Testing ensures we have happy customers, who can successfully use our products.

Here’s how you can improve your testing methods with some help from some add-ons available in the Atlassian Marketplace:

Test Smarter

qTest Scenario for JIRA is add-on for Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven Development (TDD), and Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD). It helps teams manage their end-to-end workflow from test creation to test execution, allowing teams to optimize and scale the Test-First approach across their entire organization. This JIRA add-on connects user stories, testing, results, and defects with end-to-end traceability, giving insight into things such as linked defects or the latest execution results.

Who should use it

qTest Scenario for JIRA is for teams that want to adopt a Test-First approach to agile development. Teams that test first benefit from faster feedback loops, have more modularized, flexible, and extensible code, and prevent unwarranted design or components (think gold-plating) to sneak into the product. Try it free in the Atlassian Marketplace.

Improve quality

Developers that master testing not only increase the efficiency and capacity of their teams, but also produce higher-quality software. QMetry for JIRA is a test management tool that helps improve quality by providing a test management framework that is easy to use. It integrates nicely within JIRA and helps assure proper test coverage by creating modular, reusable test scenarios and action steps. This add-on also offers customizable reports so you can dive deep into analytics like coverage and productivity with complete comprehension.

Who should use it

This add-on is best suited for traditional QA teams that want to be involved earlier in the development cycle, so they can build test scenarios while continuously testing early development builds. Try the server or cloud version for free.

Improve efficiency

PractiTest’s Test Management integration for JIRA Cloud provides a seamless test management, QA and development process solution that allows end-to-end testing traceability. Here’s how it works: changes in JIRA are reflected automatically in PractiTest. If a test runs and fails in PractiTest, the failed test is reported and pops up in JIRA with a full description of what happened. The developer, seeing this in JIRA, can go back and update the bug.

Who should use it

Agile software development teams generate a lot of data and sometimes that data is hard to understand. PT Test Management for JIRA Cloud offers customizable dashboards so you can quickly see how many tests need repair, how many tests failed, are blocked, or passed. Get it now.

Keep your team in sync

Code Climate for HipChatautomates code review for software development teams, analyzing every commit, branch and pull request for test coverage, complexity, duplication, security, style, and more. This integration sends notifications of potential issues as they happen and automatically notifies your team whenever important events occur in your analysis, so you can fix issues sooner and ship better code, faster.

Who should use it

Teams that use HipChat to stay in sync and want to monitor the health of their code will find this add-on very helpful. Code Climate helps by quantifying the issues in your code, summarizing the changes, and giving you the data you need to demonstrate the importance of code quality. Try this cloud add-on for free.

These are only a few of the thousands of add-ons available within the Atlassian Marketplace. Add-ons are designed to increase your creativity and productivity by allowing you to customize and enhance your Atlassian applications. Additional information and other add-ons can be found in the Atlassian Marketplace. Looking to build your own add-on? Check out our developer site to see how.

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/11/4-add-ons-help-test-smarter/An agile design prototype is worth a thousand user storieshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/75-vzDrq_tY/
Wed, 16 Nov 2016 17:00:14 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=36136Once you build prototypes into your design process, you get a better feel for whether you are solving problems in the right way for your customers. You will also find it invites more constructive feedback from customers and internal teams, as it feels more real than a static mockup ever can. Taking the agile design prototype approach and refining the prototype multiple times allows your team to find better, more elegant solutions, faster.

To prototype, or not to prototype?

All web and mobile app experiences are becoming highly immersive. Gone are the days of designing a series of linked webpages. Thoughtful animation and interaction design is key to defining amazing user experiences. Apple’s world famous design director Jony Ive has this to say about the modern day design process:

“[The design process] is about designing and prototyping and making. When you separate those, I think the final result suffers.”

Applying that to modern day web and app design, you need to see and feel the interactions rendered by software to know if you’ve nailed the experience. Prototyping helps get you to that a lot earlier and faster in the development cycle.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Okay, great! I understand how to design and how to make things, but what exactly does it mean to prototype? Let’s go to the Wikipedias:

“A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.”

Prototyping gives everyone on a team a single idea to work from and is a far more effective way to communicate a designer’s intent than a group of static screenshots. For example, a well crafted prototype can show an entire team exactly how an “on hover” state in a design should work, rather than leaving this open to interpretation.

There are various ways to prototype, with various levels of detail and what to use depends on what stage you’re at in the project.

Type of Prototype

What

Best for

Paper

Sketch out the screens you want to test. Put them in front of a customer and when a customer taps or clicks on the screen, swap out the screen for a new one manually.

Very early rough concept validation.

Wireframe

Stitch together your wire frames with links that transition between each screen. Sketch will let you do this. Even keynote can be surprisingly effective.

Early validation of the information architecture, or common user journeys within a website or app.

Visual design

The same as previous but at a higher fidelity. If you are getting closer to shipping your designs, you need to start getting much closer to the actual designs customers will see. Tools like InVision are really easy to pickup and use, even for non designers.

How does one approach agile design?

Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand user stories.

Prototypes help you simulate working software much earlier in the cycle. You don’t have to go through the expense of time and effort before you genuinely get to experience the software and give feedback. It also reduces the need for documentation. You can save time, minimise wasted effort, and avoid frustration during the development process as cross-functional teams will require less back and forth to validate interactions and flows.

By having a prototype that simulates working software, you will notice that the rest of the team not only better understands your design intent, but they also become more engaged, leading the team to have conversations about what it is we want to build, and what it is we can build. Individuals and interactions!!!

Agile teams value customer feedback early in the development cycle. The other beauty of a prototype is that you can see customers interact with your finished design, before you’ve written a single line of code. Conducting well structured user research using a prototype is extremely cheap and easy, even if you don’t have access to a full-time researcher. To conduct our user research at Atlassian, we set up our own usability testing lab (“AtLab”) with very little time and effort. We even created a simple step by step guide for how you can do it yourself. When you combine a well crafted prototype with simple-to-setup usability testing, you can save yourself a ton of wasted engineering hours building something that either customers do not want, or that has a poor user experience. Much better to find and fix these things early, than ship a poor experience to customers.

Integrate design into your agile development workflow

There are often some common challenges that tend to arise when a project moves into the design phase, some examples include:

Product Managers get anxious that designs will not be ready before the start of a sprint

Some designs may make it into a sprint with no time allocated for customer validation or feedback from engineering teams

Engineers picking up stories and then wasting time locating the latest design file. Where’s the link to the design? Where’s the attachment? Is this the latest design?

However, a lot of the problems above can be avoided by integrating design directly into your agile workflow. Here are some tips for how to do that:

Consider incorporating an “in design” status into the workflow and track this via a team board.

If your team is following a SCRUM framework, designers should attend all planning sessions and standups.

Many SCRUM teams at Atlassian will create a specific “design debt” project, board, or component within a workflow. This picks up existing known design bugs associated with the product. The team will usually try to integrate at least one of these issues into every sprint, so they are continually improving the overall user experience for our customers.

On longer running pieces of work, design work may simply become a story within an epic. Or even sometimes a sub-task of a parent issue. This can help teams understand where they are “blocked by design”.

Demo trusts are important at the start of a project to align senior stakeholders on the objectives of a project.

It is also helpful to organise E2E demos to solidify that shared understanding amongst the team, as well as run to invite open and honest feedback from stakeholders.

Designers don’t like being harassed for links to assets and having to constantly find issues and re-upload each design revision. On the flip side, developers hate having to track down updated designs and all the details they need to code the design properly. All this back and forth can really hinder innovation.

Recently, we’ve been playing with the new InVision for JIRA integration to tackle this problem. This allows our teams to integrate directly between a JIRA issue and the corresponding InVision prototype. The integration with JIRA Software promotes not just visibility into the interaction design, but also encourages others to comment and give feedback – an important part of the agile process.

The prototype is always updated whenever the designer makes a change, which means a single source of truth for the entire team to work from. This allows teams to stay more in sync with each other, and waste less time searching for the latest design file.

To Prototype. That is the answer.

Regardless of the method you use, prototyping is no longer just a nice-to-have. Aligning a multi-disciplined team and ensuring that everyone comes away with a completely clear picture of the intended interaction design is key to successful product development, and building experiences that customers will ultimately love.

Once you build prototypes into your design process, you get a better feel for whether you are solving problems in the right way for your customers. You will also find it invites more constructive feedback from customers and internal teams, as it feels more real than a static mockup ever can. Taking the agile design prototype approach and refining the prototype multiple times allows your team to find better, more elegant solutions, faster.

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]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/11/agile-design-prototype/Teaming up to tackle the UX divide with InVision for JIRAhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/wj_SegJ2GGU/
Thu, 27 Oct 2016 14:00:08 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=35959We're excited to team up with InVision to create a more iterative, frictionless product development cycle. The InVision for JIRA integration enables design teams to attach design prototypes directly to JIRA issues, breaking down barriers between teams. Now, designers don't have to hassle with updating JIRA issues for every design change, and the development team is kept completely in sync with the designer's progress. Read on to learn more.

]]>An inspiring user experience is built on great product, which requires both quality code and a dynamic, intuitive design. While these two aspects of product development have traditionally been treated as separate parts of a linear process, the modern era of software development requires more collaboration, iteration, and innovation than ever before.

That’s why we are excited to team up with InVision to create a more iterative, frictionless product development cycle with the InVision for JIRA integration.

Teaming up: how code and design come together

Just like sales and marketing teams used advances in technology to work better together a decade ago, today engineering and design teams are working together in exciting, innovative ways.

This integration between InVision and JIRA breaks down a similar barrier for engineers and designers. In a nutshell, InVision for JIRA enables design teams to sync design prototypes with the development tool your engineering team depends on.

How it works

If your team is using InVision as your product design tool, simply go to the Atlassian Marketplace and install the InVision for JIRA add-on. Once installed you can attach any InVision prototype to a specific JIRA issue.

The process happens in three easy steps:

1. Install the InVision for JIRA add-on for free, or ask your JIRA account administrator to do so.

2. Once the add-on is installed, grab a share link from your InVision prototype.

3. Paste that link in the corresponding JIRA issue. Now a thumbnail preview of your design will appear, along with valuable information about your prototype.

Iteration and the art of automation

Innovation doesn’t stop, but moving between disparate tools sure puts the breaks on. Now, designers don’t have to hassle with updating JIRA issues for every design change, and the development team is kept completely in sync with the designer’s progress. This also helps product managers stay sane as design and development are connected in one organized place. InVision for JIRA lets designers, PMs, and developers easily switch between platforms to make sure everything is accurate and up to date.

This is only the beginning

InVision released Inspect in beta, which continues to streamline the development cycle by automatically recording and displaying all the important details a developer needs within a prototype – such as measurements, colors, assets, and more. This information is displayed right inside your browser, allowing development teams to quickly get the information they need.

The pairing of Inspect and JIRA enables engineering and design teams to collaborate at breakneck speed directly through the JIRA dashboard.

Both Atlassian and InVision are committed to helping designers and developers build faster and collaborate better. This integration offers an exciting new way to work together in the constantly evolving world of product lifecycle management.

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/10/invision-for-jira/6 ways to be more productive with your to do listhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/l5V9LKIR_yE/
Tue, 25 Oct 2016 13:00:49 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=35942Keeping a to-do list can feel onerous and nagging, but it can also be immensely helpful to your productivity. A recent LinkedIn Survey revealed that 63% of professionals use to-do lists, but only 11% reported actually accomplishing all their tasks in a day. Here are ways 6 you can be more productive in managing your tasks.

This is a guest post by Genevieve Blanch from RefinedWiki, makers of Refined Todo for JIRA, a personal productivity tool that integrates right into your work in JIRA.

Keeping a to-do list can feel onerous and nagging, but it can also be immensely helpful to your productivity. A recent LinkedIn Survey revealed that 63% of professionals use to-do lists, but only 11% reported actually accomplishing all their tasks in a day. For project managers or team leads, managing personal tasks and the tasks of your team is inescapable, but it doesn’t have to be painful. Used the right way, to-do lists can help you better plan and manage projects, helping put you in that 11% of professionals that gets it all done.

Here are ways 6 you can be more productive in managing your tasks:

1. Think of your list as your work strategy.

The act of creating a to-do list is useful to plan, organize thoughts, and get things done. Its primary purpose is to keep you focused, and of course, to provide a sense of primal pleasure when checking items off the list.

2. Get all your ideas down.

When an idea comes to mind, write it down before you forget it. This is the “mind like water” principle. When something comes to mind, it’s like a rock thrown into the pool of water in your mind, oftentimes distracting you from what you’re doing. Once you capture the idea and write it down, your mind can return to its calm state again, ready to keep working on whatever you were doing. In this stage of idea capture, don’t worry about prioritization and scheduling, just write everything down in a handy tool and categorize later.

3. Stop confusing to-dos with projects or goals.

Conflating a task with a project or goal is probably the most common mistake made in personal productivity. Break your projects and goals down into individual steps. A to-do should represent a step towards a goal, or an action leading to a project being complete. We recommend indexing your items with action verbs such as “go”, “email”, or “talk to”, to really be productive.

4. Make a plan for your tasks.

Best-selling author and creator of the Get Things Done system (GTD), as well as the scientists behind the so-called “Zeigarnik effect” suggest organizing your to-dos with a plan for when and how they will be done. One way of doing this is by categorizing your to-dos into short-term and long-term tasks. Your short-term tasks can be stored in what you might call a “focus” section, which should be the tasks you’re working on immediately. The longer-term tasks can be scheduled for the coming weeks, or months. Then, the to-dos that aren’t actionable can go into a “deal with later” space.

5. Reflect and prioritize your to-dos.

The GTD system suggests reviewing your list and reflecting on your choices. It’s okay to move items around from day to day in order of their priority. And, hey, an amazing idea you had late at night might not be so stellar after returning to it in the light of day, so it’s alright to remove those items from your list.

If you’re a JIRA user, you’re familiar with using issues to plan, track, and report on your work. Your JIRA issues are items set for the whole team to view. But, your to-dos are personal items you set yourself in order to record an idea, achieve a goal, or finish a project. If you incorporate a to-do list with JIRA, you can write to-dos, ideas, reminders, and steps that only you need to know about, and still directly connect them to an issue in JIRA.

When you keep a productive to-do list, here’s what you can expect:

Maintaining daily workflow focus

Gaining a sense of control over your work

Getting more of the important things done

Satisfaction when crossing them off completed items (of course!)

Want to be crazy productive? Check out Refined Todo for JIRA and track all your work in one place. Learn more about this JIRA add-on and how to use it in the Atlassian Marketplace.

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/10/6-ways-to-be-more-productive-to-do-list/Portfolio for JIRA 2.1 is now more flexible to the way your teams planhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/kwzYlSbXcBs/
Mon, 24 Oct 2016 18:37:53 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=35906The Portfolio for JIRA team is excited to announce the release of Portfolio for JIRA 2.1 - closing some of our top voted customer feedback on jira.atlassian.com. Portfolio for JIRA 2.1 makes planning more contextual with custom fields, labels and components; more flexible with un-estimated items, default estimates, and mixed estimates, and more visible with the ability to share reports with stakeholders. Read on to find out more.

]]>The Portfolio for JIRA team is excited to announce the release of Portfolio for JIRA 2.1 – closing some of our top voted customer feedback on jira.atlassian.com (we’ve been listening!). Portfolio for JIRA 2.1 makes planning more contextual with custom fields, labels and components; more flexible with un-estimated items, default estimates, and mixed estimates, and more visible with the ability to share reports with stakeholders. Read on to find out more.

Make planning more contextual

We know you have important information in JIRA Software that is crucial to the way your teams plan and make decisions. Using custom fields to track business value? Or, labels and components to track other relevant information? You can now view and edit custom fields, labels, and components directly in Portfolio for JIRA.

We’ve also made it possible for you to view your Portfolio-specific fields (i.e. teams and hierarchy levels) on your JIRA Software issues. Synchronize your team names as a field in JIRA Software — your assigned teams in Portfolio for JIRA will be exposed on your JIRA Software issue with the new “team field”. And if you’ve created new hierarchy levels in Portfolio for JIRA so you can see the bigger picture, you can now view and navigate to your custom hierarchy directly from your JIRA Software issues. (PS: both the team field and hierarchy field are JQL searchable!)

Have more flexibility when you plan

Sometimes planning can be so far into the future that you have no idea how much effort will be needed from your teams. In Portfolio for JIRA 2.1, you can now plan with un-estimated work items. All you need is the work to be associated with a release or sprint. This is great for starting your roadmap, but remember – if you want your roadmap to be realistic, you’ll need to add estimates eventually. We’ve also brought back the ability to set default estimates for epics, stories and any custom hierarchy too – a popular feature in our classic plans. This can help you plan when you’re not ready to estimate, but need a rough idea of what the plan will look like.

Not all teams work the same and that’s okay. Some teams might plan with time estimates and some might plan with story points, but you might need 1 plan that includes both teams. In Portfolio for JIRA 2.1, we’ve now made it possible to plan with mixed estimates. Yes, you can now plan with a mix of story points and time! Easily set conversion ratios between estimate types so that your plan can accommodate both time-based and story point estimates.

Keep everyone on the same page

Next time you’re asked for a progress update, or “when is X releasing?”, you can now share any report from Portfolio for JIRA in two different ways: with a view-only link to stakeholders who will see exactly what you shared with the same settings and filters you set, or with an embeddable link to the report view on iFrame. We’ve also introduced CSV export, which allows you to download scope and release reports in CSV format.

Pro tip: The Portfolio for JIRA team also shipped a bunch of other cool new features between the 2.0 and 2.1 releases. Such as the timeline tooltip, which lets you hover over an issue on the timeline to see the issue details and when you can click on the issue, it will automatically scroll to the issue in the scope view and will open the issue details. See the release notes for other cool new features!

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/10/portfolio-jira-2-1/The 4 phases of DevOps with Atlassianhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/fjpYTrDOlWo/
Fri, 21 Oct 2016 13:00:34 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=35923As Development and IT Ops teams look to be more efficient, decreasing their time to market and increasing product support, DevOps has become the predominant industry solution. There are many resources that paint a picture of Development and Operations working in perfect harmony, but how do we actually get there? Where should we start?

As Development and IT Ops teams look to be more efficient, decreasing their time to market and increasing product support, DevOps has become the predominant industry solution. There are many resources that paint a picture of Development and Operations working in perfect harmony, but how do we actually get there? Where should we start?

We need to begin with the end goal in mind. As technology companies, our goal is to deliver customers the software they need as fast as possible and continually iterate based on their feedback. The faster release development goes from concept to code, the faster they can make customers happy. Many things have been said of DevOps, but at the end of the day, it primarily seeks to increase the collaboration and automation between Development and Operations so teams can get the highest-quality releases into the hands of customers — and fast.

In our opinion, the best ways to accomplish is to get into a DevOps flow that is focused on process and powered by a set of tools like those offered by Atlassian. We’ve broken it down into 4 phases, try these on for size.

Phase 1: Go Agile

To get the real benefits of DevOps, you have to change how you manage work on your teams. As you break down your requirements into smaller individual user stories, work flows through the the process faster. By having the structure, ceremonies, and processes in place to accommodate smaller pieces of work, you can get customers the features they need and incorporate their feedback to iterate the next, release.

Here are some ideas to get your team there:

Educate: Get your team up to date on the basics with Atlassian’s Agile resources and how to do Agile with the Atlassian tools (for Product Owners too!)

Get up, standup: Simply doing stand-ups won’t automatically make you agile, but it’s a great way to get teams into the agile mindset. Gather your team together for 10 minutes a day to get a status update from each person on what they did yesterday, what they’re doing today, and any blockers that may be in the way. It facilitates more transparent and responsive team collaboration, which is the heart of DevOps.

Iterate on everything: You can’t be agile trying to tackle large waterfall projects. Break down your projects into smaller pieces, or sprints, so you can always reprioritize and adjust as needed. Start in your own department: find the planning spreadsheets with those idealistic due dates, set up a backlog, and start sprinting. It’ll just be a matter of time before other teams, like software, Ops, and even marketing explore agile!

Agile boards: Once you’re planning and executing in sprints, track and visualize it on a JIRA Software board. Avoid those dreadful status meetings and send out the link to the board to keep everybody informed. Also, throw some wallboards up around the office so everybody can see your team killin’ it.

You’ll know you’re a lean, mean, agile machine when your software teams are cranking out stories in a steady cadence of sprints. Over time you’ll see that velocity stabilize – then you can accelerate!

Phase 2: Get with Gitflow

Git and Gitflow is a great way to help dev teams increase velocity. As you’re working with smaller stories, you need to be able to collaborate effectively on your code base so you’re not stepping all over each other. Version control systems of the past aren’t going to be able to keep up with these blazing fast development teams. Bitbucket and the underlying technology of git are going to let teams build user stories and merge them into the code base without wasting time messing with annoying versioning issues and costly code conflicts.

Start with the basics: Start by learning (allthethings) about how to effectively manage your branches and build in code quality with Atlassian’s Git Tutorials and the Git Getting Started guides. Share them with your team so everybody’s on the same page and knows the difference between a commit and a pull request.

Move to Git: If you haven’t made the cutover to Git quite yet, get your team and managers on board by sharing the benefits and how it will help ship more code. Once folks are convinced, learn why Bitbucket is the Git solution for professional teams and helps with pull requests, branching strategies, permissions and scalability. When it’s time to actually move all that code over, see how we helped Splunk get git and increased the number code reviews completed by 4x.

Start branching: With the tools in place, it’s time to start branching! Learn more about some common workflows to better handle branches. Utilize those pull requests to build in code quality as you go. Eventually your Dev team will be humming with full Gitflow and your Ops teams will be in love with the clearly designated branches.

Automate, mate: The marvelous integration between Bitbucket and JIRA Software lets you automatically update JIRA issues based on what’s going on in Bitbucket. Developers don’t need to switch context anymore to keep the ticket up to date, and the whole team gets an accurate idea of what’s actually going on. Check out our Automation Webinar to learn more about the powerful workflow triggers that make this possible.

Will you lend us a hand & take our one-minute survey? Just imagine the karmic rewards.

Phase 3: CI/ CD

The next phase is how we define the crucial handoff between Dev and Ops. When your units of work and code changes are smaller, you’re going to need to deploy more often to get those features to our customers. Before you ship it to the Ops team and production, you need to ensure quality as your individual features come together. This is where good continuous integration/continuous deployment practices along with Bamboo are vital to successfully shipping product. Catching bugs and issues before they go to production is going to help both the Dev and Ops teams sleep better at night.

Learn about Bamboo: For on-prem Atlassian users, Atlassian’s Bamboo is the CI/CD solution that allows professional teams to build their CI/CD pipeline. You may be using Jenkins or other open source teams, however the deep integration points and improved build management make it the right choice for professional teams.

Integrate with JIRA: Once you have Bamboo up and running, leverage the integration between Bamboo and JIRA Software to get a unified view of your software development project.

Bitbucket Pipelines: If you’re an Atlassian cloud user, Bitbucket Pipelines is a new, powerful solution that lets developers build, test, and deploy directly from Bitbucket. Developers have the power as they can define the environment and tests for their specific branch with YAML file style configuration.

Dockerize Everything: Docker and containerization is the latest craze sweeping the IT world as teams look to deploy applications to any environment faster and easier. Check out our Docker +Atlassian webinar to learn more about how. As partners with Docker, we love to helping teams harness this cutting-edge technology.

Automate Testing: Automating testing with tools like Charlotte, QA Symphony, and Zephyr (which integrate with Bamboo and JIRA) gives your development team an even more agile edge. Get efficient, high-fidelity testing to expedite the finding and squashing of bugs to ensure your next iteration is the best version.

Phase 4: Harmonize with support

Once the story is shipped, the process does not end. Now it’s time to keep the product working and collect that vital feedback.

Set up a product feedback service desk in JIRA to really hear your customers and integrate directly with development teams.

Learn how to set up your Service Desk teams for success with our ITSM webinar featuring Paul Buffington (Principal Product Manager for JIRA Service Desk).

By implementing the right DevOps tools and processes, you’ll see the faster shipping of higher quality and better supported releases. As your Development and Ops teams continue to execute these lock-step processes, you get more agile by good practice. And, for more help, speak with our experts to start implementing DevOps today to get your teams up and sprinting.

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/10/the-4-phases-of-devops/JIRA Software for Android has landedhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/0nH5wnLAWuM/
Thu, 20 Oct 2016 16:00:12 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=35907JIRA Software for Android ships out-of-the-box with scrum and kanban boards, enabling every member of your software team to track the status of any work item and have real-time visibility into where it is in your team's workflow... from anywhere. Plus, the app was designed so that team members can easily swipe between columns and move between boards, ensuring that every project and every issue is always (and literally) at your fingertips. It's everything you love about JIRA Software boards, designed to fit in your pocket. The JIRA Software for Android app also includes features like My tasks and Notifications. Read on to learn more.

]]>When we launched JIRA Software for iPhone in May, the Android members of our JIRA Software Cloud community made it clear they wanted in on the action. And today we’re excited to announce that JIRA Software for Android has arrived!

JIRA Software for Android brings the same great mobile functionality that we introduced to iPhone, but also comes with a series of improvements that allow you to increase visibility and track team progress from anywhere with ease. Here’s how.

Maintain visibility from anywhere with boards

JIRA Software for Android ships out-of-the-box with scrum and kanban boards, enabling every member of your software team to track the status of any work item and have real-time visibility into where it is in your team’s workflow – from anywhere. The app was designed so that team members can easily swipe between columns and move between boards, ensuring that every project and every issue is always (and literally) at your fingertips. It’s everything you love about JIRA Software boards, designed to fit in your pocket.

Track your tasks in one place

Our new Android offering introduces “My tasks,” a single screen where you can see every work item that you’re responsible for. It’s a single to-do list of everything you need to take care of in one, consolidated view. So if you’re on the bus into work and need to check on something you’re working on, peruse the tasks you have on deck, or see if anything new has landed on your plate, it’s as easy as pulling out your Android. And if there’s an item on the list that you already took care of, moving it to done is just a tap away.

Keep your finger on the pulse with notifications

Your software team moves fast. To help you keep up with everything that’s going on when you’re not at your desk, JIRA Software for Android also ships with “Notifications.” The new Notifications screen provides real-time updates on all of the important work you care about most. We’ve even built in push notification settings that are entirely user-configurable, giving you full control over which of these notifications get pushed to you when you’re not in app. So whether it’s a conversation you want to track or a specific ticket you’re following, important updates in JIRA Software Cloud now reach your Android in real-time.

In addition to the new features above, JIRA Software for Android gives users the ability to capture and assign issues, respond to comments, mention other team members, attach files, pictures, and videos, and more.

Download JIRA Software for Android

A better way to track important projects and stay connected to your team has arrived. JIRA Software for Android is available now as a free download on the Google Play Store. Grab it today!

Note: At this time JIRA Software for Android is only available for JIRA Software Cloud users.

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/10/jira-software-for-android/Get data visualization superpowers with the JIRA content pack for Microsoft Power BIhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/ELg5Pbo2DO8/
Thu, 20 Oct 2016 13:00:35 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=35885Teams everywhere use Atlassian JIRA Software, JIRA Service Desk, and JIRA Core to track software development projects, IT support, operations, marketing, accounting, and everything in between. For many companies, JIRA is a treasure trove of data on the status of their projects and the health of their business. So it’s critical to be able to analyze and report on your JIRA data with world-class tools. That’s why we’re proud to announce we’ve teamed up with Microsoft to provide a JIRA content pack for Microsoft’s Power BI interactive data visualization suite. The JIRA content pack for Power BI makes it easy to fetch data from any JIRA product, whether you’re using Atlassian Cloud or your own server. Once you’ve added the content pack, you’ll be up and running with a rich dashboard of information like issue breakdowns for assignees and components, issues resolved over time, and the top issues facing your team. Will you lend us a hand & take our one-minute survey? Just imagine the karmic rewards. The real power of combining Power BI and JIRA is the ability to create modern, simple data visualizations with unlimited flexibility. You can use the JIRA integration to get new insights into development velocity or support ticket volumes, or create new dashboards for the stakeholders in your organization. And Power BI’s simple natural language search will even answer questions about your JIRA data, like the number of issues open in your project, who has resolved the most issues, or how many bugs were in your last release. Atlassian and Microsoft are working together to unleash the potential of all your team’s tools. We’re helping your dev team quickly deploy your apps from Atlassian Bitbucket to Microsoft Azure, connect operations and engineering by linking Azure App Insights to JIRA Software, or get new insights on your JIRA data in Power BI. Collaboration powers the modern enterprise, so together we’re connecting our tools to make you more productive. If you’re already using JIRA, get started with Power BI and JIRA for free. New to JIRA? Start a free trial today. Have other questions? Check out our answers community to get the information you need.

]]>Teams everywhere use Atlassian JIRA Software, JIRA Service Desk, and JIRA Core to track software development projects, IT support, operations, marketing, accounting, and everything in between. For many companies, JIRA is a treasure trove of data on the status of their projects and the health of their business. So it’s critical to be able to analyze and report on your JIRA data with world-class tools. That’s why we’re proud to announce we’ve teamed up with Microsoft to provide a JIRA content pack for Microsoft’s Power BI interactive data visualization suite.

The JIRA content pack for Power BI makes it easy to fetch data from any JIRA product, whether you’re using Atlassian Cloud or your own server. Once you’ve added the content pack, you’ll be up and running with a rich dashboard of information like issue breakdowns for assignees and components, issues resolved over time, and the top issues facing your team.

Will you lend us a hand & take our one-minute survey? Just imagine the karmic rewards.

The real power of combining Power BI and JIRA is the ability to create modern, simple data visualizations with unlimited flexibility. You can use the JIRA integration to get new insights into development velocity or support ticket volumes, or create new dashboards for the stakeholders in your organization. And Power BI’s simple natural language search will even answer questions about your JIRA data, like the number of issues open in your project, who has resolved the most issues, or how many bugs were in your last release.

Atlassian and Microsoft are working together to unleash the potential of all your team’s tools. We’re helping your dev team quickly deploy your apps from Atlassian Bitbucket to Microsoft Azure, connect operations and engineering by linking Azure App Insights to JIRA Software, or get new insights on your JIRA data in Power BI. Collaboration powers the modern enterprise, so together we’re connecting our tools to make you more productive.

]]>http://blogs.atlassian.com/2016/10/jira-content-pack-for-microsoft-power-bi/Scaled agile with Atlassian and SAFe®http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JIRABlog/~3/Qh9AED_-joQ/
Wed, 19 Oct 2016 19:00:35 +0000http://blogs.atlassian.com/?p=35904As agile adoption has increased over the last decade, many organizations have grown with agile and are using scaling methodologies to help them plan, deliver, and track progress across their teams. While many scaling methodologies are available, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) has been the most widely adopted methodology by larger organizations.

]]>As agile adoption has increased over the last decade, many organizations have grown with agile and are using scaling methodologies to help them plan, deliver, and track progress across their teams. While many scaling methodologies are available, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) has been the most widely adopted methodology by larger organizations. With the combined force of JIRA Software and Portfolio for JIRA, Atlassian provides a powerful way to support the SAFe® methodology and organizational needs at all levels.

The need to scale agile

Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc.) focus on individual team planning and delivery activities. Each methodology has specific roles, ceremonies, and reports to help ensure long-lasting success. For the individual team, these approaches have a strong history of success, but until recently these methodologies didn’t have an approach to scale across multiple teams and plan work at a higher level. As agile teams matured and grew, they became challenged with how to:

Track large initiatives which combine multiple features from concept to delivery

Plan and align business value to the team’s delivery work for objective decision making

Take advantage of multiple skill sets across teams and specialists in the organization to deliver a high-quality release

Align sprint goals across multiple teams

Build system architecture and infrastructure needs into a release plan

Use data to track progress across multiple teams, identify problems between teams, and drive towards solutions as an organization.

Introducing SAFe®

Initially, agile leaders struggled with creating a repeatable way to solve these issues. In 2011, Scaled Agile Inc. released Scaled Agile Framework for the Enterprise (SAFe®) 1.0 to help address these issues and provide success patterns for large and small organizations. SAFe® is an online and “freely-revealed knowledge base of proven success patterns for implementing lean-agile software and systems development at enterprise scale.”

SAFe® provides ceremonies, roles, metrics, and relationships that allow organizations to leverage lean and agile at enterprise scale. SAFe® is now in its 4th iteration (SAFe 4.0) and has been updated based on customer feedback, and real world usage patterns. It also enjoys the widest adoption as a method to scale agile.

Atlassian and SAFe®

There are many ways to interpret and adopt a SAFe® methodology and each organization must choose which elements are critical to them and how to leverage the proven success patterns provided. We’ve worked with cPrime and SAFe® to create a white paper that shows one approach to supporting SAFe® using Atlassian products.

Pro tip: cPrime is an Atlassian Platinum Partner that helps organizations do better agile. They bring together solutions to help companies adopt, transform and scale their business with agile development methodologies.

We recognize that each organization is structured differently and this solution provides one approach. Regardless of the specific org structure and roles within it, we find a common theme in how ideas, requirements, and communication flow through the tool and process.

JIRA Software, Portfolio for JIRA, Confluence, and HipChat are the foundational products required to support a SAFe solution. Each product plays a special role in providing the flexibility and functionality required to support SAFe®. If you want to learn how to implement SAFe® with these Atlassian tools, download our step-by-step implementation guide below.